The Partnership

The two regions, Lower Austria and the Slovakian region of Trnava, form the core of a dynamic development region within the European Union, with major potential for the future. Within this geographical area, company structures have formed which already occupy a leading niche position in high-tech fields, enjoying successful and globally-recognised status. The businesses are mainly SMEs producing primarily for export around the world, and benefiting from highly-qualified staff.

Combined with a highly efficient system for education and training, outstanding expertise in research, development and innovation, social stability and a company-friendly fiscal policy, this region exercises a strong capacity to attract companies operating on a global footing.

It is for these reasons that, in recent years, the choice of location by global players when building new production sites, particularly by those in the automotive and electronics industries, has increasingly come out in favour of this key area in Central and Eastern Europe. Investments by leading companies and by the public sector have laid the foundations for the development of a network which can enable the transition that lies ahead to be managed successfully.

The challenges to all those involved in framing that future – companies, employees and citizens, education and research establishments, public bodies and financial industries – are significant.

For that reason, Lower Austria and Trnava have come together to form a forward-looking partnership under the name DUO**STARS, one which is aiming to fashion the interplay between these forces in a goal-oriented and pragmatic manner in the years ahead.

In the medium term, this partnership is intended to become a starting point for new initiatives and models for problem-solving in the interplay between SMEs, industrial companies operating on a global scale and the policy decision-makers. The shared desire to fashion that future and the orientation to providing solutions is also aimed at making DUO**STARS a crystallisation point for collaboration, bringing together the surrounding regions step by step to form an extended wealth-creating community.